"Faith" is both an element of personal psychology and of 
subscription to a creed.  Not put simply, "our trust in 
ourselves is originally based on our trust in those who 
have cared for us, but for the moment the faithful knight 
[Redcrosse] is on his own. He is even a little beside 
himself, 'Still flying from his thoughts and jealous fear' 
(I.ii.12). Although his flight may seem to get his quest 
started, it really reverses its proper direction, and 
signals a desertion of his true calling. An act of bad 
faith is involved. The knight wills not to know the truth: 
that he can entertain unworthy thoughts about the fidelity 
of Una. ...  It is not unlikely that Redcrosse, in this 
state of mind, should suddenly have to do battle with the 
Saracen Sansfoy, for his own faith is alienated and 
threatened. Such intrusive characters [as Sansfoy] may be 
understood as providing a critique of that self-ignorance 
whereby we encounter in the objective world a part of 
ourselves that we do not properly know, or will not 
willingly face. ¶ Nonetheless, Redcrosse's victory over 
the challenger indicates that something in the knight has 
survived whole enough to be called 'self-confidence.' And 
yet his trust is immediately reposed in a treacherous 
caretaker. Redcrosse has been willful, and willfulness is 
a self-imposed narrowness, an assumed self-confidence that 
becomes joyless, blind, and exaggerated. Out of his 
willfulness develop the episodes of the House of Pride and 
Orgoglio's dungeon ..."  "[We can derive] vicissitudes in 
Redcrosse's 'force' from fluctuations in his 'faith': 
faith has meant both self-confidence and confidence in 
Another. When the knight's trust is misplaced—either lost 
or betrayed—he becomes weak and 'faint.' Trust is, in its 
nature, a kind of partnership between a trusting subject 
and the object of trust. The trustee, in whom confidence 
is reposed, is symbolized by Una and 'Fidessa.' Thus Una 
cries, 'Add faith vnto your force' (I.i.19), as Redcrosse 
struggles with Error. In the duel with Sansjoy, 
Fidessa-Duessa also shouts her encouragements. 'Thine the 
shield, and I, and all' // Soone as the Faerie heard his 
Ladie speake, / Out of his swowning dreame he gan awake, / 
And quickning faith, that earst was woxen weake, / The 
creeping deadly cold away did shake:'  (I.v.11-12). ... 
[O]f course the knight is mistaken in believing the 
encouragement was meant for him. ... ."  But in acquiring 
the rival's shield, Redcrosse also, I would argue, 
acquires a part of Sansfoy's remains as well as his 
ID--not completely unlike Hector acquiring the arms of 
Achilles from the body of Patroclus, and then wearing them 
into fatal battle against Achilles.  The shield-trophy 
needs to be connected to (or identified with) a persistent 
remains motif.  Thus Fidessa's "supposed search for her 
lord's remains is a pretentious parallel for Una's sincere 
search for Redcrosse. Una may be compared to Mary 
Magdalene seeking Jesus at the tomb; Duessa [esp in I.ii 
as Fidessa], to pilgrims seeking the true cross, or ... to 
the Crusaders attempting to recover the holy sepulchre." 
We note "Una's resemblance to Isis searching for Osiris; 
Duessa acts the parallel part of Diana, preserving the 
'relicks' of her Hippolytus-Virbius, whose body she 
conveys and hides. 'They have taken away my Lord, and I 
know not where they have laid him,' laments Mary Magdalene 
(John 20:13). 'Where have you left your Lord?' begs Una of 
Redcrosse's 'reliques,' his sword and spear (I.vii.48; cf. 
v.39)."  So it could be argued that Redcrosse not only 
acquires a badge of his faithlessness in Sansfoy's shield, 
but also a false religion of relic-worship.  In assigning 
the Dwarf "to beare away / The _Sarazins_ shield, signe of 
the conqueroure" (I.ii.22), I think we might hear an echo 
of "in this sign you will conquer" (since Sansfoy curses 
the cross that protects his foe), or the demise of pagan 
religion (like the collapse of an old wall, as the 
narrator may indicate) with the conversion of Constantine, 
whose donation of the empire to the church is the founding 
fiction for the Holy Roman Empire, and whose mother, 
according to tradition, initiated the search for the true 
cross.  ("[In Redcrosse's history] the defeat of the pagan 
Sansfoy corresponds to the victory of Constantine, who 
conquers, as Redcrosse does, in the sign of the cross. At 
this point the faith acquires its connection with the 
Roman Empire through the donation of Constantine; 
Duessa-Fidessa's mitre suggests the pre-eminence accorded 
to the see of Rome.") It is in the achieving of such an 
intersection or concentration of psychological, religious, 
and ecclesiastical-historical allegories in a single nodal 
episode like this that our poet's genius consists. (Quotes 
from AnFQ)

On Sat, 3 Mar 2012 16:30:06 -0800
  Harry Berger Jr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I agree back with Susanne. Put simply, this is how the 
>psychological allegory works: RC generates his problems 
>as the others he confronts; for him to defeat them is to 
>repress his awareness of what he has become and is 
>becoming, and so he gets worse.
> 
> On Mar 3, 2012, at 3:50 PM, william oram wrote:
> 
>> It's no accident that Redcrosse leaves battle carrying 
>>San Foy's shield as well as his girl.  Since knights are 
>>identified by their shields, the two shields he carries 
>>at the very least suggest his moral confusion.  The 
>>trophies of the later battle with Sans Joy include the 
>>shield as well as Duessa, so he is clearly faithless as 
>>well as caught in a false love.  Or perhaps it's better 
>>to say that the two are equivalent.
>> 
>> It seems to me that the biblical tradition of talking 
>>about one's relation to God (or the devil) by using 
>>sexual metaphors provides the bridge between the 
>>psychological and the religious allegory.  But that's a 
>>commonplace of the criticism, so I probably don't 
>>understand your question, Suzanne.  I do see the 
>>psychology of Book I as fundamental.  Bill
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Susanne Wofford 
>><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I have to agree with Harry! I might never have had to 
>>write my book!
>> 
>> Seriously though, RC is faithless to Una-- he abandons 
>>her in the house of archimago and fleeing from (and with) 
>>his gealous fears, he "chaunces" to encounter Sans Foy. 
>>Surely this is post hoc ergo propter  hoc logic-- he 
>>encounters SF because he himself has already been and 
>>demonstrated faithlessness and is still enacting 
>>faithlessness.  It is hard for me to see him as 
>>representing militant Protestantism at this point.
>> 
>> Meanwhile, he "conquers" SF by fighting with him as an 
>>equal (as the simile suggests they are essentially 
>>indistinguishable in their faithlessness and arousal and 
>>sexual pride), and then taking up the loser's armor and 
>>girl he heads off with great pride, presumably he is 
>>proud because he won the woman they were fighting over. 
>> It is not accidental that he immediately comes upon the 
>>house of pride.  Has he beaten SF or become him? What is 
>>a victory if having the battle in the first place is the 
>>mark if a terrible fall?  I think harry, jim, and mark 
>>rose said a lot of this many decades ago.
>> 
>> My question Is how to fit  the psychological and 
>>religious allegories together?   While I follow the logic 
>>of the allegorical readings suggested by several of you 
>>in this great exchange, I am not comfortable leaving 
>>behind what seems to me the grounding action of this part 
>>of  the poem, RC's own faithlessness and sexual arousal-- 
>>his failure as a moral being.  I think it is also this 
>>element of the action that is so wonderfully underlined 
>>by the simile.
>> 
>> Susanne
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On Mar 3, 2012, at 12:04 PM, Harry Berger Jr 
>><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> > Epic simile as sociobiology. What a great idea! If Jim 
>>had told me that when I was working on Sp's epic similes 
>>(in the early 1950s?) it might have changed my life.
>> >
>> > On Mar 3, 2012, at 8:56 AM, James C. Nohrnberg wrote:
>> >
>> >> Yes, epic simile as sociobiology.
>> >>
>> >> [log in to unmask]
>> >> James Nohrnberg
>> >> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>> >> Univ. of Virginia
>> >> P.O Box 400121
>> >> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>> 
> 

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121